Frax Finance's Fed yield-matching staking vault attracts $30M, FXS steady

Frax's governance token FXS is in stasis as the decentralized finance protocol's nascent high-yielding staking product draws millions in investor money.

Early Thursday, Frax unveiled sFRAX, an ERC4626 staking vault allowing holders of the protocol's partially collateralized fractional-algorithmic stablecoin FRAX to earn yields matching the U.S. Federal Reserve's (Fed) interest rate on reserve balances (IORB), currently around 5.4%.

The product debuted with an APY of 10%, eventually converging with the Fed's 5.4% IORB rate. So far, more than 150 users have poured in more than $35 million in the vault, according to Dune Analytics.

FXS' price rose 7% to $5.66 on Thursday, but has since pulled back to $5.49 to indicate a 0.5% gain on a 24-hour basis, CoinDesk data show. The steady price action is consistent with the continued low-volume range play among market leaders bitcoin and ether.

More than 150 users have poured $35 million in the newly launched sFRAX vault. (Dune Analytics) (Dune Analytics)

The new offering comes as lending protocol MakerDAO enjoys a first-mover advantage in capitalizing on high interest in the U.S. According to Parsec Finance, MakerDAO has invested over $2 billion in short-term bonds via offchain structures since February 2022, offering a 5% savings rate on DAI and buy back its MKR token.

On a year-to-date basis, MKR has gained over 168%, outshining bitcoin's 62% rise by a big margin. FXS, meanwhile, has gained only 32% this year. Some in the crypto community expect FXS to catch up with MKR.

"Impressive growth from sFRAX with $24.6M allocated to Frax Finance's FinresPBC short-term U.S. Treasuries strategy currently yielding 10%. FXS set to make a MKR catch-up trade and reignite protocol revenue with the 5.25% risk-free rate," McKenna, pseudonymous founder of Founder of Arete Research, said on X.